No No No

[gautrek]

Please Hollywood stop making films about myths like Robin Hood and then getting people Like Russell Crowe to play the main person.There is no way he is Robin Hood.

He is not and will never be Robin Hood and no i haven't seen the film yet and have no intention of going due to RC playing the lead role.

[Runyan99]

Gautrek = Kevin Costner?

[hoolaman]

Who are the other people like Russell Crowe?

[Michael Emrys]

Who are the other people like Russell Crowe?

I've only ever seen him in Master and Commander, so I really don't have any idea how he has performed over the course of his career, but I thought he did a quite creditable job in that movie.

Michael

[souldierz]

Russel Crowe is a very good actor, but I feel hes starting to play these legendary hero types that gets all the glory to much in his movies, and some of the crowd might be getting tired of seeing that.

Me personally I would like to see more movies come out that revolve around a bunch of characters, and not just around the 100 million dollar actor that stars in it.

Kevin Costner's "Robin Hood" was one of my all time favorites when I was younger, and I still like it to this day.I'll still check out the new "Robin Hood", and I do hope it is good, because I find nowadays, there is a lot of crap movies coming out.Same story and plot just recycled over and over and over and...well you get the point.

Michael Emrys, are you saying you never saw "Gladiator" staring Russel Crowe? You must be one of the few that hasn't seen it and if you liked him in "Master and Commander" ( I also found that he did a very credible job playing the part) then you'll probably like his acting in "Gladiator".It was a good movie.

[Other Means]

Can't imagine him starting opposite Jennifer Aniston in a laugh a minute rom-com soufflé but he does good hero.

200 years ago he'd have made a fine Cavalry officer and done deeds of daring did.

Today he's an actor and chat show bore.

Tempus fugit.

[MeatEtr]

Gladiator is what made him a star.

[Stalins Organ]

The new one, of courswe, has little to do with the myth anyway - RH helps out in the Levant on crusade, D-Day landing craft powered by oars to invade England, etc.

pure bovine waste material - and the moron director saying it is the "msot historical yet".......sigh! :/

However you can't blame RC for the script - he didnt' write it, he's not directing it.

I blame him for being a puffed up over hyped @#$@% (rhymes with banker)......he's 1 kiwi we are happy the Aussies have

[Runyan99]

Well I'm certainly not going to see it, but not out of protest for Crowe. I simply can't get interested in yet another hack and slash rehash of the same old stuff.

Seriously, who out there was really needing another Robin Hood movie about now?

[Affentitten]

The new one, of courswe, has little to do with the myth anyway - RH helps out in the Levant on crusade, D-Day landing craft powered by oars to invade England, etc.

Are they as good as the ones in Troy? Where they hit the beaches, dropped the ramps and then everyone got machine-gunned by arrows.

[REVS]

I want to see Cate Blanchette as Maid Marian, though.

[Stalins Organ]

Are they as good as the ones in Troy? Where they hit the beaches, dropped the ramps and then everyone got machine-gunned by arrows.

I thought Troy had them leaping of the sides of things that did actually look like galleys - RH's ones are straight out of D-Day....with oars!

[gunnergoz]

Did they at least get the Royal Navy Assault Crossbow Bombardment Barges correct in RH? I hate it when they leave them out.

[gautrek]

D-Day landing craft powered by oars to invade England

I must admit i had heard about the landing craft.But then i expect no better from Hollywood when it comes to legends and historic "fact".

My pet hate is the swords carried on the back in Velcro scabbards and people who use a bow like its a quarter staff.Oh and the usual Kung Foo fighting practised by ever man woman and dog

[Stalins Organ]

Royal Navy Assault Crossbow Bombardment Barges ? no of course not - they were used on a different beach, couldn't have been used on Locksley Beach, and had had no effect anyway .....

[hoolaman]

I want to see Cate Blanchette as Maid Marian, though.

I've just watched the trailer and I think Cate needs to lay off the ciggies, she sounds like a dude.

And I unfortunately have to agree, Rusty Crowe is very distracting and not a great fit in this role.

Oh and the movie looks kind of sh1t.

[Affentitten]

I thought Troy had them leaping of the sides of things that did actually look like galleys - RH's ones are straight out of D-Day....with oars!

It's true. I may have blotted it from my mind. I always like how everyone comes into the beach at full sail. Lucky enough that the wind is always blowing in the right direction, let alone the perils of shoaling a boat at full speed and then controlling it in the swell.

[Stalins Organ]

Galleys did come ashore every night in normal circumstances - but usually stern first - since the stern shape is better suited for getting off again.

There were some assaults on defended beaches - such as the Spartans at Sphacteria - see chapter 11 especially where a Spartan captain said they must ".....run them boldly aground, land in one way or another, and make themselves masters of the place and its garrison" and then (ch 12) forces his steersman to run his ship ashore....and gets killed for his trouble!

I don't know of any others off hand.

[Affentitten]

Yes they came ashore every night. But gently! No good for your boat to be ramming it at full pelt onto the shingle. Tends to knock everyone on their arse as well!

[Michael Emrys]

Likely once they got into the shallows the crew jumped out and hauled on ropes until it was firmly aground.

Michael

[Dietrich]

At least some of the weaponry -- namely single-handed swords -- in RH (judging by what the trailer shows) is somewhat more accurately contemporaneous than in Scott's previous medieval film, Kingdom of Heaven, where the hero wielded a fairly not-late-12th-century-looking hand-and-a-half sword and used tactics which looked like they were gleaned from a 15th-century Italian fencing manual.

As much as I love picking apart history-derived movies and making note of the inaccuracies or even outright falsehoods therein, I've come to realize that movies about events and people that happened in the past all suffer from a baseline minimum degree of inaccuracy because of several things: (1) drama is always more important to moviemakers and moviegoers than historical fact; (2) moviegoers are pretty much ignorant of historical fact; what little they "know" about history is based more on myth, legend, and misconception than on documented reality; (3) historical accuracy is oftentimes and to varying degrees difficult to achieve technically and logistically.

So they might as well make yet another movie about Robin Hood, even one which purports to be the most historically plausible version thereof. Because the public is so ignorant of historical realities that even if a 100% historically accurate movie were to be made, they wouldn't know the difference and thus would be unable to appreciate or enjoy it. In fact, a truly accurate historical movie -- especially one about people and events 900 or so years ago -- would be relatively hard to understand for the average moviegoer because people in, for example, early 13th century England thought, talked, acted, fought, loved and dreamed differently than early 21st-century Americans.

[Affentitten]

because people in, for example, early 13th century England thought, talked, acted, fought, loved and dreamed differently than early 21st-century Americans.

Time travelling American to 11th century peasant: So what do you want to do with your life?

Peasant: What?

[Stalins Organ]

My boss asked today how was it that these ancient battles had so many people in them - how could the Romans & Carthaginians manage to get 130-140,000 people together for a bit of a scrum in 218 BC - how did they feed them all? where did they come from?

Trying to explain the workings of the Roman & Carthaginian societies was a bit of an effort - the concepts of "the vote" being pretty much the most important thing in existance, of fighting to get it, being prepared to be conscripted for years to fight for it, etc ......well it was interesting experience explaining it all!

[gautrek]

early 13th century England thought, talked, acted, fought, loved and dreamed differently than early 21st-century Americans.

I am in the middle of reading a good book about just this subject.

Its Called "The time travellers guide to Medieval England"

Its a fascinating read and goes through all the details of living in this time including social interaction

[dieseltaylor]

Product details

• Hardcover: 341 pages
  
• Publisher: The Bodley Head Ltd (2 Oct 2008)
  
• Language English
  
• ISBN-10: 0224079948
  
• ISBN-13: 978-0224079945
  
• Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.4 x 3.8 cm

A nice review from Waterstones site

If you are lucky enough to get picked up by a passing Time Lord on his way to 14th century England, there's a couple of things you should know first. There was a lot of poo, for one thing. I mean, lots and lots. In the streets, in the ditches, in the rivers, in special poo-pits where the luckless 'gongfermours' toil day and night up to their necks in it. You might think that at sea you would be spared this excremental deluge; how wrong you would be. Since few sailors or passengers are brave enough to balance themselves on the rigging to do their business, the floors of the cabins squelch brownly for the entire voyage. The past is indeed a foreign country, and one of the smellier ones at that. This gleefully robust portrait of the middle ages could not be further removed from the 'Merrie England' of Ruskin and Chesterton, which, to be fair, always did come with a liberal dusting of nostalcum powder. Ian Mortimer's bold peasantry lead lives that are nasty, brutish and short - literally so, for the wretches were about a foot shorter than you and I. Poor diet is to blame here, although one can't help thinking that if they really regarded green vegetables as poisonous then their lack of stature owed as much to stupidity as economic hardship. Nearly everyone you meet will be under the age of forty. And, because the drinking starts at breakfast time, many of them will be bladdered. Add to this the daggers and swords that were considered essential for fashion as much as self-defence, and you begin to see why this country composed mostly of the young, the drunk, and the well-armed was such a violent place. But not lawless: justice in medieval England was swift and severe, owing to their admirable system of 'frankpledge', in which each man between 12 and 60 promised on pain of fines to report and deliver any criminal in his community (or 'tithing') to the authorities. Medieval law worked because, quite literally, people knew their place: with most of the population living in small villages, any malefactors were caught, tried and punished within days. This excellent book by Ian Mortimer tells you almost everything you could ever want to know, and, as noted, quite a lot you will do your best to forget, about the medieval world. Religion, work, literature, medicine, law, clothes, hygiene: it is all here. There is one very strange omission, and that is what people actually sounded like. Would we be able to understand them? David Crystal's 'Pronouncing Shakespeare' shows that it is possible to reconstruct the sound of Elizabethan English (like a cross between Morrissey and Wurzel Gummidge, apparently); could Mortimer not have tried something similar for Chaucer? Be that as it may, 'The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England' was a joy to read. Richly informative, superbly researched, handsomely produced: what more could a time-traveller ask for? Apart from a pair of Wellington boots, obviously.